This week in honor of Cinco de Mayo we’re taking a close look at everyone’s favorite emulsion: mayonnaise. And we’re transforming it five ways with the flavors of Mexico.

At its most basic, mayonnaise is achieved by whipping egg, oil and an acid of some sort, most often lemon juice or vinegar, into a stable emulsion. Other ingredients including mustard, garlic, salt and sugar often are added.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with grabbing a jar of Hellmann’s or Duke’s off the grocery store shelf. But if you’re going to try making mayo at home —and we think you should — now is a good time to talk ingredients.

For starters, mayonnaise is generally made with raw eggs, and you’ll want those to be fresh and of high quality. While some recipes use whole eggs, a yolk-only approach is most common. Room temperature yolks are preferred as they emulsify more reliably.

Many commercially available mayonnaise brands use soybean oil, which is both inexpensive and very bland. Home cooks have far more latitude. Flavorful oils such as olive oil and coconut oil are popular choices, but both tend to result in a mayonnaise that’s more assertive than desirable.

For this week’s batch of recipes, a mayonnaise made with a neutral flavor oil such as sunflower, safflower, grapeseed or canola oil is preferred. We do include an egg-free version that substitutes avocado for nearly all of the oil typically used.

As for making the stuff, culinary schools train budding kitchen professionals to whisk mayo by hand. Some cooks swear by a food processor to achieve the desired effect with considerably less elbow grease.

For us, homemade mayonnaise is all the justification necessary to purchase a good immersion blender, sometimes called a stick blender. In our experience, it’s the single most effective way to get consistent results in a matter of minutes.

The secret to this technique is using a jar just wider than the head of your immersion blender. The blender head needs to make firm contact with the base of the jar for the mayonnaise to emulsify correctly. A wide-mouth, pint-sized canning jar works perfectly.

Once you’ve got a batch of mayonnaise ready to go (store-bought mayonnaise may be used instead), all of our zesty variations can be made in 10 minutes or less. And our recipes are ready for a proper Cinco de Mayo party: we’ve loaded them with lemon and lime juice, a few different types of chile, cilantro and other tastes South Texas loves.